The Mentor
by trilliumg
Summary: Twentysomething Moira Murphy finds herself responsible for a bizarre and life-altering task.


Eternal thanks to _theskymoves_ for being my beta.

* * *

Moira poked her black-bobbed head from beneath her duvet cover and glared at the dusty panes of glass in her bedroom window. Those blasted blue jays were at it again! An entire family of them had nested in the little tree just outside, and they'd been fighting and squawking and coming and going since dawn, just like they had every morning for the past few weeks. For God's sake—didn't they know it was Saturday?

She reached over to her nightstand, picked up her tiny mobile phone, and lobbed it at them as hard as she could. "Shut up, dammit!"

That would only buy her five minutes' peace, but still—once in a while it felt good to get a little revenge on them. Saturday mornings were perfect for dreaming late, and those stupid birds weren't going to keep her from it. She let her head fall back onto her pillow and tried to wish herself back to sleep. It was the best pillow ever, the super-squishy down one her mom had given her last Christmas to go with the comforter from the year before. She folded it in two and rolled onto her side. Her eyelids started to droop, and that hallucinatory, wow-wow-wow sensation started up in her vision, the one that came when she was about to drift off. _Wow…wow…wow…_she was almost there. Almost…

It seemed like just a minute later that she heard the crash. The noise came from the spare bedroom down the hall, an austere place that contained a chipped-up bed and dresser, an armchair, and a sturdy old bookcase. Absolutely nothing should be going _crash_ in there.

Then she heard it—a male voice, muttering something unintelligible. _Oh, God! There's a man in my house!_ Her blood ran cold. Was it a burglar? A rapist? Reaching around under her bed, she found the handle of her trusty old high-school baseball bat. Should she confront him or stay put? Call the cops? Oh, right—her mobile phone was all the way across the room now. Brilliant.

He'd only said a couple of words, it seemed, and now there was…silence. That was almost worse. Quickly, she appraised her attire. At least she was wearing a long t-shirt. She imagined the picture she'd make: a short, slight girl in an oversized pink-and-gray-striped T, holding a bat over her head, threatening to club him if he gave her any trouble. Right…she'd be lucky if he didn't laugh himself to death.

She heard him mumble something again. Was he crazy? Was he just standing there having a conversation with himself? And what was he doing at her house, anyway? This had been her aunt's house, not exactly in the greatest neighborhood, and in worse shape than most. There was nothing in the house worth stealing, and it looked it.

_Focus!_

She slid silently out of bed into a crouch. Gripping the bat for dear life, she crept across the carpet toward her mobile phone. She should really call the police, but there was something about that voice. It wasn't loud or violent, she realized. It wasn't scary at all. It seemed mildly hesitant…almost confused.

She crept around her bed toward her bedroom door, past her shabby, homemade computer desk, and peeked around the jamb into the hallway. The far door was closed, as usual, to keep the sun out in the morning. Thank goodness, too, otherwise he'd have seen her right away. Bracing herself, she made her way carefully toward it, the murmuring growing louder and her heart pounding harder with every step.

When she reached the door, she stopped and took a few deep breaths. If he'd wanted to steal something or attack someone, he would have left the room by now, right? She closed her eyes and counted. _1…2…3…here goes nothing!_ "Hello? Who's in there? You've got five seconds to answer before I call the police. And I'm pretty handy with this baseball bat."

The voice from the other side was muffled and indistinct. "I, uh…not going to hurt anyone…"

She had to strain mightily to hear him. Back in the 1940s, she supposed, they'd made doors like they meant it. She put her ear up against the cracked white paint. "What?"

"…don't know how I got here. Or where 'here' is, really."

Oh, great. What were all those weird problems she'd studied in her abnormal psych course? Dissociative disorders, fugue states, amnesia? Maybe he _was_ crazy. Crazy was most certainly not good. She held her breath for a moment, trying to slow down her heartbeat, then let it out with a _whoosh_. "What do you mean, you don't know how you got here?"

"I know it sounds strange…"

He seemed to have some sort of accent, perhaps British or Australian. Maybe he'd made his way here from the Irish pub up the street, drunk and looking for a place to sleep it off. The same thing had happened last year to one of her neighbors. She felt her heartbeat begin to slow a bit. "Ok, here's the deal," she said. "You're going to face the far wall, with your hands above your head. Understand? Tell me when you're ready, and I'll open the door."

"Okay."

She waited a few seconds, but he didn't say anything else. She rolled her eyes impatiently. "Was that okay you understood, or okay you're ready?"

"I'm ready."

She let the bat rest against her shoulder and reached for the door, wondering if she was about to make a serious mistake. _Dear Abbie and John, _she thought, _We regret to inform you that your daughter was an idiot…_ With a trembling hand, she pushed the door inward. Its antique cut-glass doorknob, true to form, landed with a thud on the carpet.

With the door wide open she could get a good look, and her heart leapt into her throat. The man was enormous, probably 6'1" and 200 pounds, with fair skin and cropped, copper-colored hair. "Don't move!" she said. Why, _why_ hadn't she just called the police?

Then she noticed his clothing. He wore a loose, white, long-sleeved shirt over tan pants, but what really got her attention was his feet. They were bare. What was he doing without any shoes? From the back, at least, he looked like a gigantic Huckleberry Finn.

"So!" she said, trying to keep her voice blustery. "Last chance. Tell me how you got here."

"I really don't know," he said. "I went to sleep last night, and then there was a crash and this ghastly yelling, and I woke up in this bed." His paused, and his tone grew sheepish. "Well. I'd fallen _out_ of this bed."

Her eyes narrowed. "You _really_ don't know where you are."

His voice dropped to a murmur. "Honestly, I've no idea."

That _voice_. It sounded so familiar! Her mind scrabbled to place it, without success. "Okay, turn around now so I can see you."

Hands on his head, he turned cautiously to face her. When he saw how she was dressed, he immediately averted his eyes. "Oh, you're…you're not…I'm sorry!"

He not only sounded familiar, he _looked_ familiar. Turned away from the window as he was, the right half of his face was in shadow, but she could see the other half plainly in the gentle light of morning. The cut of his jaw, the shape of his cheekbones, the downward curve of his nose… No. It wasn't. It couldn't be. That was impossible!

But it _was_.

Her mouth fell open. _"Alistair?_


End file.
